Perception with an Eye for Motion

Description

Perception with an Eye for Motion analyzes the availability and use of visual information from moving objects and by moving observers to conclude that information in our visual environment is sufficiently rich so that perception can occur largely without the help of cognition. The book is unique in several respects. It is interdisciplinary in scope, combining philosophy, history, perceptual science, and research in a sound balance; the problems that philosophers and computer scientists are dealing with are taken up in a way that will appeal to psychologists. It is the first book to treat invariance in perception in a rigorous manner, and it solves the problem of direction finding in optic flow (the motions of objects generated by our own movement through space) by discerning what information is useful and can be relied upon. The first five chapters take up information for vision, delving into philosophical and historical issues, particularly the trustworthiness of perception, and the relation of space and projections of objects as'discussed in art and science. These chapters also cover optics, illusions, picture perception, and more particularly invariance as a term from mathematics applied to perception. Eight chapters present the author's own research, published here for the first time. These include experiments and results concerning the perception of a moving planar surface and the perception of one's direction of movement through an environment. The book concludes by discussing two centuries-old classes of perceptual theory - direct and indirect perception - and a new theory class which the author calls "directed perception." James E. Cutting is Professor of Psychology, Cornell University. A Bradford Book.